Ash was still nursing a hangover from yesterday and his reflexes were slow. He’d gotten drunk at the wedding, then again last night when he sat with Ben and Chloe as they talked the “future”. He’d not lasted long actually. Ben and Chloe were in love and that was a good thing, but them defining that they wanted a couple more kids was something Ash didn’t want to be listening to. He’d taken the rest of the whisky up to the spare room that would be his home as he was house sitting for the rest of the summer.
So yeah, he blamed the alcohol effects for how he was startled and how he actually had taken a step back when Stephanie had held her cat up right in his face. There was the faint shimmering of tears in her beautiful blue eyes and his heart had broken at the sight.
“What’s wrong, pumpkin?” he asked. He hoped to hell he sounded normal now that his heart had started to beat again.
“Tux is gonna miss me,” his niece announced.
“Aww, Stephy, of course he will, but he’s got his favourite Uncle Ash to look after him.”
Ash took the beautiful black and white cat from her and held the beast firmly enough so that it wouldn’t fly off and belie the confident image he was trying to portray. Tux adored Stephanie but only just tolerated everyone else. Ash had the scratches to prove it and he’d only been in the house a short while.
After the crap from Connor, he’d walked back up to Fordham Grange, the anger at not being able to defend himself slipping away with each step. He’d gone to bed and woken up to Tux sitting on his chest and pawing his face. Of course, with that paw came claws and now he was sporting a scratch that went from left eye to temple. Damn cat. But he would never let Stephanie know about his and Tux’s hate/hate relationship. He just promised himself he would always wear his jersey boxers in bed, because the idea of this cat from hell anywhere near his groin was a horrifying thought.
Ben, Chloe and Stephanie were off on honeymoon for the summer. Chloe’s idea to take her new step-daughter so she didn’t feel like Chloe was coming in and stealing Stephanie’s dad. They were staying in various European countries, ending in London, and Ash was babysitting the cat and their house, Fordham Grange. This was his supposed vacation time and he was looking forward to over a month of uninterrupted summer days—with added homicidal cat and work sent over from his office—but he’d find ways around that. After all, cats did that whole disappearing for the daylight hours thing and the work he could do when he wanted to do it.
“I’ll make sure to show Tux your picture every day.”
“And let him listen to me on the phone.”
“I’ll put the phone next to his tiny cat ear,” Ash promised.
Ben came into the room, two bags dangling from one hand and his phone in the other. “Text came in. Taxi’s here in five,” he announced. Chloe came in next and picked up a small bag from the sofa. She hugged Ash goodbye and encouraged Stephanie out with her. That just left the two brothers, and Ash was choked with the words he had to get out.
“Ben, can I talk to you about something?”
Ben glanced at his phone screen. “Sure, I have a few minutes. What’s up?”
All the words were there to say, the explanations, the reasons, the result of it all, but he couldn’t do it. It would take too long. Instead, all Ash said was “When you go to Venice, make sure you go to the glass place.” Weak.
“On my list,” Ben said with a grin. He looked so happy, so relaxed, and he deserved to have a fun honeymoon with his new wife and their daughter.
“Have the best time, Ben,” Ash said. They hugged and held each other for the longest while.
“And you. Okay,” Ben said into his neck. “Have a summer romance, fall in love, enjoy the house, do wonderful things.”
And with that Ben, his daughter and his new wife left.
Ash waved to them from the door and watched even after the taxi had disappeared over the hill and was probably at the main road. He felt something at his feet and saw Tux winding in and out of his legs.
“Hey, kitty.” Tux purred up at him. “Aww, that is kind of cute. Maybe you’re not so bad after all.” Ash attempted to stroke the cat and realised he was being manipulated, getting a hiss and a paw full of claws for his trouble. Shocked, he stumbled into the door frame and cursed as the damn black and white monster flew across the lawn and disappeared in the direction of the church.
So much for the start of those wonderful things his brother had talked about.
Firing up his laptop, he left it downloading Windows updates and went to the large airy kitchen to make coffee. A caffeine kick and a few hours of surfing the Net would probably settle him down. Carrying the coffee, he bypassed the sitting room where the laptop sat on the coffee table and instead moved outside to sit in the kitchen garden. The emails could wait, but sitting here with the scent of rosemary and the warm summer breeze on his face was his idea of heaven.
Fordham Grange was certainly not the biggest of the family’s properties, but the sprawling sixteenth-century four-bedroom house was definitely his favourite. He enjoyed his apartment overlooking Hyde Park, and sitting by the pool in the Portugal home was his idea of a holiday, but this place? The Grange was a real family home that Ben and Chloe had made their own. It came with an indoor pool, a huge kitchen garden, more manicured lawns beyond and the most amazing views of the Fordham valley, but at the heart of it was love.
And now I am getting sappy.
Sitting here, he could almost rationalise the path his life had taken. Landon ran the Sterling-Haynes business alongside their dad, Ben was the estate manager in charge of six thousand acres of the most beautiful English countryside. Ash had never really had a role. He’d somehow quite by accident ended up working with Landon, sidestepping into accounts management more by luck than judgement. He was the guy who things happened to, and he went with the flow.
His cell vibrated, and he answered it as soon as he saw the name on the screen.
“Eric, hey.”
“Final packaging came in if you’d like to see it?”
A small buzz of excitement at seeing the final look of the products balanced the immediate worry of seeing Eric’s name on the screen. This side project of his, no matter how he’d exposed himself financially, was about the only thing in his work he enjoyed. “I’d love to.”
“I’ll email you the pictures.”
“What do they look like in real life?”
Silence.
His stomach fell. Were they that horrible? Was everything fucked-up? His world crashed.
“Sorry?” Eric asked. “Bad line, say again?”
Ash stood up and walked through the closed garden to the open acres beyond where signal was always better. He was on the edge as the lack of an instant answer had him thinking a million black thoughts. His cell beeped to let him know about the email.
“What do they look like in real life?” he asked again. He and Eric had seen the designs on paper, but actually in 3-D, the packaging was vital to this whole thing.
“It’s… I have no words. Gorgeous. I wish you were here to see this for real.”
Ash wouldn’t have been there even if he’d not been at Ben’s wedding. This reveal, this next step was Eric’s now. Eric and his family, and the fifty or so people whose jobs relied on them. They didn’t need Ash hovering over them micro managing the revival in their company.
“I’m only a phone call away,” Ash reassured. “And you know we agreed I should stay away for the rest of this.”
“I don’t know what to say, Ash. This is more than I could have hoped for. We will never let you down.”
“Take care, Eric.” The call ended and Ash managed to avoid the embarrassment of having Eric thank him again. If Eric knew what Ash had intended for Eric’s company in the first place, Eric wouldn’t be thanking him, and God, if Landon and Ben found out what he’d done to dig everyone out of the hole…
Ash groaned and buried his face in his hands. All he wanted was an uncomplicated life where he wasn’t responsible for people or staff or time or money or anything except himself.
So why didn’t he just walk away? Why didn’t he sell Condaline on like the board had said he should? Break it up, sell the land the factory stood on, pay off the redundancies, fund the pension… just get rid of it all and bank the profit.
“Because I’m a fucking idiot. That’s why,” he muttered to no one.
Stepping back, with his back against the wall of the kitchen garden, he slid down to sit in the long grass and tilted his head up to the sun. Summer in Upper Fordham, well away from London and money and the abject fear he was fucking everything up. His hand closed around a stick in the grass and he opened his eyes and focused on the wood in his hand. Turning it this way and that, he examined the grain. It was part of a thick branch, gnarly and twisted with the bark peeling away to reveal the striations and creamy colour below. He teased away the rest of the bark and pulled a small penknife from his pocket to remove the rest.
At first he couldn’t think of what to do with it. Holding it up to the light, he squinted at the shape of it, the undulations, the smooth, the rough, the small barnacle type nodule of another twig that had long since snapped off. What he held in his hands looked a little like an adder. Tension slipped from his shoulders as he scraped and shaped the length of the wood, cutting a shallow diamond pattern into the wood and running his fingers along the configurations as he worked. When he worked with the wood, a hobby he’d long since given up, he knew he could relax and forget everything.
The finished snake sat on his palm, no bigger than his hand. The only thing it was missing was a forked tongue. Stephanie might like it when she came home; she had a collection of small animals, although to be fair, hers were soft hedgehogs and rabbits, not exactly a snake. A horrible, furious, screeching scream broke his silence and startled him from his introspection. Quickly pocketing the snake and the knife, he levered himself to stand. Jogging off the pins and needles from sitting in one place too long, he mourned the loss of the peace he’d found carving. The screaming yowling sound stopped abruptly, and Ash stopped walking, trying to get a handle on where it had come from.
Then a soft mewling sound coming from the shed caught his attention. Cautiously he approached the building and opened the door, a streak of orange fleeing the scene so fast that Ash stumbled back in shock. Pivoting on his toes, he caught sight of a huge ginger cat disappearing over the wall, and he heard the most pitiful sound. Peering through the gloom of the dusty interior, he couldn’t see anything but he could hear the noise, a heavy breathing, a low mewling, pathetic, needy, scared. Taking out his cell, he used it to locate the noise and found Tux, laid flat on his side and making a noise that sounded like a purr but was more of a vibration of his whole body.
“Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me.” Less than a day in charge, and he’d already failed in keeping Stephanie’s cat safe. Wearing only board shorts and a T left him nothing to wrap around Tux.
“Should I even be moving you?” Looking around, he located some sacks and carefully used the material to pick up the injured cat. Instinctively he cradled the tiny body against his chest. At least Tux stopped mewling. Only after he stumbled out into daylight did he see the blood.
And only then did he start to run.